


'Til the Daylight Comes

by themonkeycabal



Series: Run 'Verse [11]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Captain America: The Winter Soldier Spoilers, Gen, Implied violence and torture, Sleep-Deprivation Fueled
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-30
Updated: 2014-04-30
Packaged: 2018-01-21 10:37:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1547609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themonkeycabal/pseuds/themonkeycabal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bloodless men shift warily on their feet. They tremble in his cold.</p>
            </blockquote>





	'Til the Daylight Comes

**Author's Note:**

> 05/16 Edited to say this is actually not entirely unrelated to the Run 'Verse. It's been kind of my working foundation for the Bucky of the Run 'Verse. So, I've decided to add it to the series, because elements will become relevant later. 
> 
> It went weird, though, so you can skip it. I hadn't slept for three days when I wrote it. 
> 
> Various pieces of dialogue were taken from both "Captain America: The First Avenger" and "Captain America: The Winter Soldier", neither of which I wrote.
> 
>  
> 
> ***

The Soldier dies uncountable times, and is reborn uncountably more. 

And when he dies, he sleeps, and when he sleeps, a stranger dreams. 

Across his cold, somber mental clime, purple clouds gather in the bitter blue-black sky, then settling, with swirling mists they overwhelm the void of clarity. Indistinct, shapes rise and stretch, memories bound by wakefulness are loosed, and in his tomb the Soldier falls into uneasy rest.

_"Licorice laces, and Mary Janes, and ... and, honey chews, and chocolate buttons!" His friend stretches up on his toes, desperate to see, with eyes wide and voice hoarse, barely more than a whisper. Another summer cold._

_"Whatever you want, buddy," he says, confident, and stands tall, a head above his friend, to peer into the long, glass case at sugared fruit and caramel creams and peanut taffy. "Whatever you want."_

The Soldier is woken, and for a moment his eyes roll and his mind trembles, and there's nothing for him but wildness, turmoil. 

"Good morning, Soldier. We have a mission for you."

The Soldier blinks and stares and watches the thin-faced man, sharp edges, cruel mouth, shrewd eyes. Behind him, two men in white; they wring and twist and wash their hands together. They are nothing, the Soldier leaves them, examines instead the first man, as confusion fights against clarity. 

The Soldier could break the man's narrow neck, crush the bones and tear the flesh, give him one last moment of wet, gasping life. 

The man frowns. "Has he been wiped?"

"Yes, sir." 

The man steps back a pace from the Soldier and tries to be powerful, tries to command, he arcs his head up, all arrogance, his cruel mouth firms, and still the Soldier watches him.

"You have a mission, Soldier," he says unflinching, but there is, in the back, in the low, a tremor. 

The Soldier stares until clarity is the whole of him, confusion drowned in hallowed silence. 

In the sweet, bright air, in the warmth of the sun, in the kiss of breezes on his cheek, there is no freedom, there is no light, there is only the Soldier's ever-winter. 

Once screams and fire fade to smears across the land and sky, the Soldier sleeps again. Back in the deep, deep gray, where shadows hide until bolstering clarity crumbles. 

_Men in strange, white uniforms on a green, jade field, a murmuring audience, and then a roar, a crashing wave, a shout of triumph, exultation to the skies._

_"Did you see that, pal? Did you see that?" His friend pounds on his arm with small, frail hands, fingers so often tripped and frustrated by tremors. Still, they flutter now in elation, in life and clear, unburdened joy._

_"Hot damn! A walk off! I saw it." Swinging an arm across his friend's narrow shoulders, he tilts his head back and laughs, offering up his own exuberance to the bright blue day._

"He's awake!"

Thick fog recedes, dragging, heavy, stealing him as it fades. 

"Welcome back, Soldier. Are you ready for your next task?"

The Soldier stares down at his hands -- one silver, one flesh. One is a stranger; he doesn't know which. 

"Soldier."

Looking up, he frowns. The walls are gray. So, too, are the men around him. Bloodless with fear, bloodless with savagery. They stand back from him, and his bound stranger-hands. 

"Will he always be this hard to wake?"

"It takes a few minutes for the process to settle."

"Does he remember?"

"No."

"Good." Bloodless men shift warily on their feet. They tremble in his cold. "Soldier, are you ready for your next task?"

Blinking, he looks once more at his hands, and nods, giving up a dream, already lost, for the sting of wicked lucidity. 

This time there are shrieks, the next choking silence. This time a knife in his hand, the next a rifle. He stands close, he watches from afar. Blood pools, flames consume, explosions thunder across still skies. 

The Soldier has done well, the Soldier may return, the Soldier may sleep. 

Again and again he embraces the quiet, merciful ice of his tomb, discovering, each time anew, the ghost, the stranger who stirs in those not-dreams, the not-memories. And each time it will rake its claws across his mind when he wakes, reluctant to give him up, but forever driven back by razor-edged agony and the unforgiving focus of the Soldier's purpose. 

_"Damn it, pal. You couldn't wait for me?" He bends down and picks his friend up from the filth and fetid rubble of a narrow, brick alley. Grabbing his friend's chin, he frowns at bloody nostrils and swelling flesh. "Is it broken?"_

_His friend scowls and backs up, wiping a filthy arm across his upper lip, spreading blood and snot over his hollow cheek. "No, and I was fine."_

_His temper rises. He drove off the bullies with clumps of scummy garbage and a couple punches, but now he wishes they were back. Back, so he could beat them again, so he could drive them down into the rotting, wretched dust. He can't beat sense into his friend, but God damn it, he could break the sons of bitches who left his brother bloody._

_"There were three of them," and his voice rises to a shout of frustration, of irritation, of rage._

_His friend shrugs, petulant. "I had 'em."_

"Good morning, Sold--" The man never finishes. They did not bind the Soldier's arms, and memory does not fade quickly enough to save this man's life. The Soldier breaks him. 

By the time he is finally subdued, three lay shattered at his feet. Vengeance for an unremembered wrong is satisfied. 

He is passive when they sit him in the chair, he complies when they tell him to open his mouth, he sees the blood on his hands and watches, distant, the drying, black streaks. He is still staring when white, blinding, vicious currents rip him from his mind. When it passes, the Soldier waits. 

"Soldier." A wary man. A calculating man. He smiles at the Soldier. "I admire the fire that still burns."

The Soldier does not speak. 

"Do you know who you are?"

"Yes."

"Who are you?"

For a moment, another voice. _"One-oh-seventh. Sergeant --"_ Silence falls.

"Soldat." He speaks with a rusty voice, a strange, familiar word on his tongue. 

"Yes. Our Winter Soldier. You are our legacy and our future. Come, Soldier," the man approaches and releases him, "we have great things to accomplish."

The Soldier stands, and for a moment his legs are weak, then strength, unnatural, unreal, returns. 

"You will be our great general, yes? You will lead men to glory, for the world, for order against chaos. But first, a girl. Make her in your image, Winter Soldier."

She is red like blood, like fire, like rage and fear. His cold, metal fingers wrap around the hot flesh of her neck, slender, delicate. 

She's been trembling fierce, a wounded animal, snarling, weeping, begging. 

Sometimes he is delicate; he builds her. Sometimes he is brutal; he destroys her. He shapes her. He carves her. He chips away dross and reveals the beautiful, horrible blade of her. 

Now he looks at her. Looks on his work. There is something in her eyes, and for a moment his long-held clarity shudders. 

There is a stranger there. 

And then she spits at him, and the stranger is gone. Her knife -- his knife -- bites into his still-flesh arm. He's proud of her. The Soldier tightens his hand and gifts her with her own gray unconsciousness. He leaves her to sleep with his blood on her fingers; her victory, her reward. Her rebirth in his image.

When the Soldier slips again into his sleep, into his wavering, swirling fog of dreams, they echo now, dim and distant. The edges break apart into loose tendrils, grasping, failing, weak. Green fields turn hazy yellow. Laughter, an idea he can no longer sense. Brotherhood, a foreign notion he's never known. The words still linger, voices still call, but they bluster and storm and rage against a final forgetting; he is drifting deeper into the blue-black stillness of his night. 

When he wakes again, he chokes on loss he can't feel, he can't see, he can't know. 

"Good morning, Soldier. We have a mission for you."

"Good afternoon, Soldier. We have a task for you."

"Wake up, Soldier. You are called."

He rises and falls, and drifts like a nightmare through the waking world, and slumbers in bitter night, solid now, untroubled by dreams. The stranger is long silent.

"We have a task for you, Soldier."

This task is not like others. He remembers. He's forgotten what it's like to know he is remembering. 

Red hair across the green matted undergrowth, red blood beside her, spilling out onto the greedy earth. Gasping, she tries to stand, she reaches for her weapon, she kicks out with her foot. 

Standing above her, he watches her struggle for breath, he watches her eyes and the fierce fight within. And he sees it then. She is no longer his. She has been reshaped. 

He raises his weapon and she raises her chin. Her lip trembles, her jaw clenches, her hands grasp uselessly at tufts of grass, late-summer pale, but she does not look away. She does not hide from him, unlike those bloodless men in those gray rooms. She bares her teeth and stares, unyielding. 

He is proud of her. 

She is not his mission. He leaves her to the forest; she will survive. She will rise as he does. Made, unmade, remade. 

When he returns, the man asks, "Do you dream, Soldier?" 

"No."

A rough pat on his shoulder, like approval, like respect. "Then enjoy your peace, Soldier. You have earned it."

There is no measure of time but that brief count of his tasks, his missions, his duties. Three days. Two. A month. Seldom more. The time to hunt his quarry, the time to carry out his orders, the time to strip from his skin the gore and the grime, and then sleep once more. No longer able, but even if he could remember, he does not know how long the stranger has been still, he does not know how many times he's fallen into empty slumber, he does not know how many days or years or decades have passed since the last misty fog of memory surrounded him. 

But, it's come again. He sleeps and this strange half-life of dreaming wakes. 

_He's frustrated. He's afraid. He doesn't want to go. He wants his friend to understand that this is not a choice to run to. But, always stubborn, his friend glares back. Not for the first time, he wonders how such a weak heart can be so strong, so brave, so unafraid, so many things he wishes he understood._

_The frail, sickly boy, and the stout, healthy one. He knows his friend longed helplessly to be like that healthy boy. That he could run free in the streets, could dash up stairs without pause, could breathe deep in the winter, could swim fast in the summer. But, oh, right now, the stout boy wishes he had half the strength, half the courage, half the sheer dumb stupid conviction of that frail boy._

_"Just ... don't do anything stupid until I get back."_

_"How can I? You're taking all the stupid with you."_

The Soldier wakes with a ragged gasp, he claws at the air.

"What did he say? Did you hear?"

"I don't know. I think it was English."

"He said 'brother'."

"Does he have a brother?"

"Does he remember?"

"Should we wipe him again?"

"No, wait, it always takes a moment. You'll see it in his eyes. Don't get too close now."

He shudders in the chair, metal and leather groan with him. When he stills, when icy knowing and bitter coherence push back the ragged, quaking dreamscape, he opens his eyes. 

"Welcome back, Soldier." Red hair, but wrong. The man gazes down at him, confidence and arrogance, power and faith. "It's almost time. For so long, you've done such wonderful work. You've helped us prepare for our day. Now, are you ready to lead us?"

The Soldier watches but does not answer. He is handed a photograph. 

"This man. He's ... a problem. Eliminate him."

The Soldier knows his mission, he knows his business. He does not look at the photograph, but stares back at the man, with his wrong-red hair, pale and weak under the green, buzzing lights. 

"And we need your help finding something. You've got a big job ahead of you. But, I know you can do it."

"Yes," the Soldier says simply. 

He commands his soldiers, he surrounds his target, but the man is resourceful. Run to ground, he escapes. The Soldier is undaunted, he is patient. The man is dead by nightfall. 

But, the target was not alone and now, neither is the Soldier. A tall man, and fast, as strong and unnatural as he, chases after, but the Soldier is older, his speed honed in shadows and midnight strips of black and silver. 

Task completed, but before he can sleep, the Soldier is summoned. He is given a new target, and once more he will meet that man. Tall, though there's something of a wrongness in it the Soldier can't name. Blonde to his dark, clear eyes to his clouded, but speed to speed and strength to strength and determination to relentlessness. 

And a second target. A woman with hair like fire and rage and fierce unbending life. She is fast, and she is cunning, and she draws first blood, but the Soldier is patient. His shot finds her, and his aim falls on her, and for one second he hesitates.

One second for the tall man to reappear, to break his concentration on the woman. To draw him off entirely, because something is not right. In the acrid, smoke-filled street, in punches and shots and kicks and brutality of flesh and metal and bullets and blades, there is another battle. At first just a chip, but then a crack, a pop, and clarity begins to fail. 

Ghosts appear in the smoke and haze, stepping out from reaching, grasping tendrils of grit. For one heartbeat, then two, and three, and more, they stare.

"Bucky?"

The Soldier speaks to acknowledge orders and to give them, seldom more. But, the name slices deep, a fresh wound and bright, hot pain, and he is so unlike himself, his voice breaks free.

"Who the hell is Bucky?"

The woman moves, attacks; she's shrewd and undaunted and resourceful. The Soldier retreats. He can't remember the last time he did. Maybe forgetting is a blessing. But his confusion, his fog of dreams in his waking, he can't think of anything but the wrongness of that street. 

Mind lost in bitter, frigid air, in a stomach-lurching plummet, a hand reaching out, useless, failure. Then pain and, eventually, rebirth. But something missing. His arm? But, no, he's got another, and that's just pain, this ... this is an ungraspable memory, hidden in the deep, deep gray for uncountable years. The Soldier begins to sink into that gray, to follow after it, to name it, to know it again.

A sharp slap from the man with the wrong-red hair pulls him back.

"That man on the bridge ... who was he?" and "I knew him." He's given his orders, told he can save the world, liberate it from chaos, but something in the Soldier has snapped away entirely, and all that's left in his stripped-bare mind, "But, I knew him."

They sit him back, they prepare to wipe him, they are going to steal him again. This one moment he can remember. The only. And if it's pain, and loss, and hurt, there's something else, some thing he's forever and never known the name of. He doesn't want to go. He doesn't want to be taken away again. 

With nothing but deepest petulance and resentment, he opens his mouth, he lets them strap him down, he lets them take the only thing he's ever had and replace it with mad, crystal clarity. 

He is reborn again. And he is fire and rage and death. Destruction and annihilation left beneath his boots, broken bodies, shattered armies, devastation. He unmakes the world, so that others can redeem it, can grant to it the brilliant, sharp, scouring gift of his unburdened understanding. 

He meets his target. A tall man, light to his dark, in a blue uniform. Blue of the clear, free sky. It means something. It hurts something. There are ghosts beside him. They whisper things he can't hear, and show him images he can't see, and they swirl around him and hang upon his shoulders and he looks at the man in the blue uniform and tearing, ripping, sundering confusion falls to a black-red wall of rage. The rage of loss, the rage of stolen things, the rage of uncountable days.

"Please don't make me do this."

The Soldier is silent. The Soldier is lost to his rage. His clarity gone, his purpose now to hurt, to break, to spill this blue soldier's blood and feed the seething storm given life by his own forgotten agony. 

The Soldier does not win this war, destruction does not come by his hand. He falls again, a wretched thing. Trapped, an animal, nothing chasing his mind but everything he doesn't understand. When he sleeps this time, maybe his blue-black night will stretch forever. 

The other soldier staggers towards him, slipping, falling, his life dripping through red fingers. The Soldier watches. The Soldier waits. His enemy, his target, his brother soldier frees him. 

"You know me."

"No, I don't!" The Soldier lashes out. Madness of perplexity and hurt and anger and he is so lost. So lost to ghosts and mists and there is nothing to him. 

"Bucky, you've known me your whole life."

He strikes again. 

"Your name is James Buchanan Barnes."

"Shut up!" He roars and howls and strikes and drives back that blue soldier. 

"I'm not going to fight you. You're my friend." And that's the word he always, forever and never remembers. That's the mists in his mind, that's the empty place beside him, that's the searing desolation and dark, bright fury. 

He tears his throat, a harsh, broken cry at the world, and falls upon the other man. The Soldier tries to pound away the not-quite memories in the stranger's face, he tries to crush this ripping, rending turmoil, so much worse than every time he slept, and every time he woke, and every time he was remade. 

The blue soldier lays still, tells him to finish it, and, surprised, the Soldier falters. 

"I'm with ya to the end of the line."

In that battered face, blood smeared across the man's cheek, the Soldier is the one who breaks. Rage turns to horror, pain to grief, and it's the Soldier who's unmade.

Before he can be reborn, the man falls, as the Soldier once fell. Even as acrid flame and jagged destruction call to him, he watches the man fall. His friend. 

His friend. 

When the Soldier follows, it's because there's nothing left of him but this, the echo of his own stranger -- lost for how many years? -- the boys who scrambled through the brown-brick mazes of their home, the men who fought together in cold, deadly forests. Brothers. 

The Soldier pulls his brother from the river, and lays him on the bank. He watches until he can see the rise and fall of his chest, see water spill from his lungs. And then he walks away. 

The Soldier failed his mission, but Hydra has failed theirs, they've fallen from the sky, and nobody has called him back. Nobody has sent him to his tomb, nobody has torn him from himself. He walks away.

He is still the Soldier, but he is something more. A friend, a brother, and ... 

A stranger's face, his own, stares back at him. Sepia, brown, aged in a way he hasn't. In a gallery of heroes, a truth he can't call lie. 

The Soldier does not die, the Soldier does not sleep, the Soldier is not renewed, is not reborn, is stripped of clarity and purpose. 

The Soldier is unmoored, unfettered. 

The Soldier is lost.


End file.
